At the Googleplex, a unique company culture was evolving. To maximize the flexibility of the work space, large rubber exercise balls were repurposed as highly mobile office chairs in an open environment free of cubicle walls. While computers on the desktops were fully powered, the desks themselves were wooden doors held up by pairs of sawhorses. Lava lamps began sprouting like multi-hued mushrooms. Large dogs roamed the halls — among them Yoshka, a massive but gentle Leonberger. After a rigorous review process, Charlie Ayers was hired as company chef, bringing with him an eclectic repertoire of health-conscious recipes he developed while cooking for the Grateful Dead. Sections of the parking lot were roped off for twice-weekly roller hockey games. Larry and Sergey led weekly TGIF meetings in the open space among the desks, which easily accommodated the company's 60-odd employees.
The informal atmosphere bred both collegiality and an accelerated exchange of ideas. Google staffers made many incremental improvements to the search engine itself and added such enhancements as the Google Directory (based on Netscape's Open Directory Project) and the ability to search via wireless devices. Google also began thinking globally, with the introduction of ten language versions for users who preferred to search in their native tongues.
Google's features and performance attracted new users at an astounding rate. The broad appeal of Google search became apparent when the site was awarded both a Webby Award and a People's Voice Award for technical achievement in May 2000. Sergey's and Larry's five-word acceptance speech: "We love you, Google users!" The following month, Google officially became the world's largest search engine with its introduction of a billion-page index — the first time so much of the web's content had been made available in a searchable format.
Through careful marshalling of its resources, Google had avoided the need for additional rounds of funding beyond its original venture round. Already clients were signing up to use Google's search technology on their own sites. With the launch of a keyword-targeted advertising program, Google added another revenue stream that began moving the company into the black. By mid-2000, these efforts were beginning to show real results.
On June 26, Google and Yahoo! announced a partnership that solidified the company's reputation — not just as a provider of great technology, but as a substantial business answering 18 million user queries every day. In the months that followed, partnership deals were announced on all fronts, with China's leading portal NetEase and NEC's BIGLOBE portal in Japan both adding Google search to their sites.
To extend the power of its keyword-targeted advertising to smaller businesses, Google introduced AdWords, a self-service ad program that could be activated online with a credit card in a matter of minutes. And in late 2000, to enhance users' power to search from anywhere on the web, Google introduced the Google Toolbar. This innovative browser plug-in made it possible to use Google search without visiting the Google homepage, either using the toolbar's search box or right-clicking on text within a web page, as well as enabling the highlighting of keywords in search results. The Google Toolbar would prove enormously popular and has since been downloaded by millions of users.
As 2000 ended, Google was already handling more than 100 million search queries a day — and continued to look for new ways to connect people with the information they needed, whenever and wherever they needed it. They reached out first to a population with a never-ending need for knowledge — students, educators, and researchers — paying homage to Google's academic roots by offering free search services to schools, universities, and other educational institutions worldwide.
Realizing that people aren't always at their desks when questions pop into their heads, Google set out to put wireless search into as many hands as possible. The first half of 2001 saw a series of partnerships and innovations that would bring Google search to a worldwide audience of mobile users. Wireless Internet users in Asia, Japanese users of i-mode mobile phones, Sprint PCS, Cingular, and AT&T Wireless customers, and other wireless device users throughout the world gained untethered access to the 1.6 billion web documents in Google's growing index.